The week that was

April 27, 2014

STICKY SITUATION What? A?pitcher in Major League Baseball caught using pine tar to help improve his grip on the ball? We're shocked? Actually, what shocks us is the apparent cluelessness of New York?Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda, who was ejected from the game on Wednesday after umpires found a glob of pine tar on his neck, in plain view of anyone with decent eyesight. This is the same guy who was suspected of having pine tar on his hand in a game earlier this season against the same Boston?Red Sox. In that game, the substance miraculously disappeared after a few innings and the Red Sox did not officially ask the umpires to check Pineda's hand. But on?Wednesday there was no denying what was on Pineda's neck. Really??Can't a professional baseball player be at least a little bit sneaky about cheating? We know that using pine tar or other foreign substances happens more than we think, but when it's such an obvious violation of the rules, we wonder what Pineda was thinking. He was suspended for 10 games, and deserves every bit of it.

MORE SOCK PROBLEMS While cleanup of hundreds of potenially radioactive oil filter socks has begun at a site near Noonan, a state health officials said last week that another pile of the oil field waste has been found near Crosby. The second site was found last week in a field, and officials said they were unsure of how long the material had been there or how much material had been illegally dumped there. The former landowner of the Crosby site is in jail on an unrelated charge, and the new landowner is cooperating with officials. Meanwhile in Noonan, crews are working to clean up the building where some 60 cubic yards of filter sock waste were discovered. The state is footing the bill for the work, and authorities said they don't know who is to blame. That's simply not an acceptable answer. The responsible parties in both cases must be found and prosecuted.